UN Advocacy

Fact Sheet on Human Trafficking and Prostitution

The Scope of the Problem

• It is estimated that 700,000 to 2 million people are trafficked annually.

• According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, “trafficking of human beings has reached epidemic proportions. No country is immune.”

• “Traffickers face few risks and earn huge profits.”

• A recent CIA report estimated that 45,000 - 50,000 women and children are brought to the US every year to work illegally to work as prostitutes, abused laborers or as servants.”

• In Africa, UNICEF estimates that more than 200,000 children are enslaved. Children are often sold by unwitting parents who believe their children will be taken care of or educated.

Annually thousands of women from Central and Eastern Europe are lured by the hope of finding jobs in Western Europe as models, waitresses or servants by traffickers who then confiscate their passports and enslave them in the sex industry.

• In Asia, girls from Nepal and Bangladesh, most under 18, are sold to brothels in India for $1000 or less.

• In Europe, it estimated that 10-15% of the foreign prostitutes in Belgium are trafficked from other countries. Many are sold in to prostitution rings.

What’s being done?

For more information about trafficking and what is being done to prevent it, check out the UN website www.unodc.org/unodc/en/trafficking_human_beings.html

For more information about what the US is doing to combat trafficking, go to www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2005